This blog is closed and has moved to http://Charlottegore.com. See you there!
Having been mulling over starting a new blog, I finally decide to take the plunge after reading Nick Clegg's piece in the Torygraph yesterday.Those who remember my old blog will remember I was an advocate for Clegg's leadership because, quite specifically, he promised - and yes, I know, I'm naive and stupid and all the rest - that he wouldn't dwell on subjects only of interest to Lib Dems. He promised to reach out to the wider electorate and get in touch with the concerns of real voters.
So, imagine my dismay, and frankly despair, upon seeing an article written by Nick doing the exact opposite. In fact, writing to a Tory supporting paper with Tory supporting readers to lambast the Conservatives for lacking policies then listing some punative Green taxes we're into - especially higher taxes on road haulage the day after truckers were protesting about the tax burden on their business - struck me as so monumentally counter-productive that I couldn't really, in good consciousness, stay quiet.
Why is it that with the Government and Labour being as unpopular as they've ever been, we seem unable to say anything that's resonating with the public mood. I just don't understand, I really don't. The only logical conclusion is that we're not in touch with the public mood. Or, at least, the people who communicate on the party's behalf - the leader and our MPs and others - certainly aren't.
I feel embarrassed that I had so much hope that Nick would be better than this. I want to know how this piece came to be in the Telegraph yesterday. I want to know who's decision it was to send such a piece to the fecking Torygraph. I want to know who's idea it was to promote Green Taxes during Fuel Protests.
I want to know why anyone in this Party honestly believes that given a choice between:
- lower income tax and being priced out of being able to drive a car
- higher income tax and getting to keep driving
- people for whom public transport is more practical
- people who already can't afford to drive
- those who abstain on principle
- those who haven't yet learnt
- those who've been disqualified
I don't even believe the policy is workable in practice. The more expensive motoring becomes, the more of a status symbol it becomes. The more of a status symbol it becomes, the more people will be willing to pay to keep driving, and so on, and so forth. Of course, as people eventually concede defeat, the greater the humilation when you have to admit to your colleagues at work, your friends and family, that you've been forced to sell your car because you simply can't afford it anymore.
What happens when it's an office full of people? Are they going to say, "hey, you know, it's great we're making this sacrifice for the sake of the Environment, isn't it? Gee, I feel marvellous now! I think the Government's definitely, definitely doing the right thing. Those Lib Dems are great!"
Er, no. They're going to go absolutely mental. That's what'll happen. They're already going mental just from the cost of filling up, and we're still tut-tutting at them.
So, Green Taxes are, in their current form, a major loser. It's a huge, screaming loser and I'm convinced that our obsession with the Environment and changing people's behaviour through the tax system is our very own Clause 4. It's our commitment to Nationalision, or our Commitment to scrap Sterling in favour of the Euro.
The other two parties are going to ditch Green policies, if they haven't already. They know they're electoral suicide in the midst of a recession, which leaves just the Lib Dems and the always-in-touch-with-reality Green Party to fly the flag.
And we're clearly going to do it, aren't we? We're going to go into the next election as principled losers, determined to take the moral high ground on an issue that the other two parties won't touch with a barge pole, and as we watch our MPs get decimated, as the Tories romp home with a massive majority and as Labour still manage to get more seats than us, despite everything, we'll be able to hold our heads up high and say: Hey. We didn't compromise. Go Us.
We do it to ourselves. We do. And that's what really hurts.
This blog is closed and has moved to http://Charlottegore.com. See you there!
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5 comments:
Helloooo! Have blogged on the overall thrust of this piece, but a couple of detail points I want to add:
1. Your either/or choice between lower taxes + no driving or higher taxes + driving is an artificial construct. It takes no account of the fact that lower taxes enables one to put a higher proportion of disposable income towards driving. I suspect it's much closer to being a zero-sum game, with the difference that lowering taxes and raising green taxes actually gives people the choice to put their incomes towards car travel or not. Which is surely the liberal thing to do.
I agree it could potentially be sold as an either/or, but I think in the current climate we're a long way from any party being able to argue that higher taxes are a good thing, whatever the pay-off.
2. The price of oil has got nowt to do with green taxes, as you know. This is a matter of reasonable public consciousness. The price of oil is a daily subject for discussion on the news. At worst, green taxes will be seen as compounding this - but they're not the problem and that's clear. If people only dimly understood that oil values operate independently of green taxes, I'd be worried, but they do understand it fairly well.
3. Nick's speech was primarily about taxation. I would have preferred a stronger emphasis on the tax cuts, but essentially he was rehearsing a lot of the same stuff as was in the recent Policy Exchange speech. The tax package, as you know, does work on the specific basis of lower tax and higher green tax. So it's difficult to avoid talking about the green taxes.
Cutting the basic rate *will* resonate, come the election, regardless of the trade-offs. It's true that the trade-offs aren't ideal - one of the things we could highlight is that it *isn't* only green taxes that pays for the tax cuts.
I and others thought the reverse last year about the 10p tax cut. It went by in the press without a whimper, the asinine formula that Brown had cut taxes on middle income families was repeated everywhere, but we thought that at some point there would be an outcry and we were right. Nick should continue to keep those tax cuts in the public mind, because it will pay off.
I want to know why anyone in this Party honestly believes that given a choice between:
* lower income tax and being priced out of being able to drive a car
* higher income tax and getting to keep driving
...that anyone would ever choose the former - except for people who don't actually drive at the moment
Having to brave the M62 every morning on my way to work has softened my view on this. I really don't mind the idea of pricing a few people off the roads if it cuts down on the queues! This is, of course, an entirely selfish viewpoint although one could argue that I am still paying (and quite handsomely) for the privilege of continued road use in the exorbitant cost of fuel.
I am, however, not likely to be your average road user (or average thinker-about-political-issues) so I don't think that this counter-example truely refutes your basic point, which seems to me to be broadly correct.
Yes let's ditch our policies at the first sign of trouble. Then all our opponents will suddenly be so impressed that they will start voting for us.
Anyhoo, this talk of pricing people off the roads is hysterical. If you shift a bit of tax from income to fuel, anybody on average earnings who drives an average amount will pay the same.
Now Green Taxes do get oversold as a route to big changes, which is unfortunate, and justifies some of the hysteria.
And so talk-backlash-talk cycle has turned back to backlash. It has happened before and it will happen again.
Meanwhile Clegg does better than most, and could do even more, in focussing on the failures of governments, instead of whining and harping about the failures of individuals.
Green taxes are just as evil as regular taxes, but more necessary.
Oh dear, turns out I don't get emails when someone posts a comment. WHoops!
Hmm.. I'll have to have a bit more of a think on this subject.
What I think Nick Clegg is doing is talking about the environment to get people interested. He has spoken about how environment isn't people's major concern and we need to show that it should be. Having just been to Henley they'd delivered leaflets on the environment making people aware of the tories rubbish policies on it. Perhaps he should be linking it to people in a better way though, by showing how it effects them and how LibDems can adress their worries.
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